First posted on Talk to Action

When Left Behind Games launched its convert-or-die videogame Left Behind: Eternal Forces in mid-November 2006, its stock traded at a peak price of $7.44 per share. Breathless boosters at RedChip issued a "strong buy" recommendation and predicted that within 18 months, the stock would soar to as much as $18.70 per share. Really?

In fact, Left Behind Games' stock chart looks like a ski slope. Not a gentle bunny hill, but a World Cup grand slalom course, groomed for a world-beating downhill run. Today, you could buy a share of Left Behind Games for a quarter -- with change left over. On March 21, 2007, the stock closed at 18 cents a share.

The media is beginning to sit up and take notice of citizen concerns about the first Christian instructional video on religious warfare for children.  This morning the San Francisco Chronicle had a front page story describing citizen concerns about the video game Left Behind:  Eternal Forces, which is based on Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of novels.  The story is titled: 'Convert or die' game divides Christians: Some ask Wal-Mart to drop Left Behind. This was followed today with a well attended press and blogger teleconference hosted by DefCon, (the Campaign to Defend the Constitution) which featered comments by Clark Stevens of DefCon, Tim Simpson of the Christian Alliance for Progress, and Frederick Clarkson of Talk to Action.

Beginnning with Jonathan Hutson's ground breaking series exposing the hate-based agenda of the game, Talk to Action has done considerable reporting on and in-depth analysis of the game and its underlying ideology.  Here is a brief anthology of Talk to Action posts that can serve as a back grounder on the game.

At a press conference today in Phoenix, Arizona, a coalition of progressive Christian groups called for the recall of the hate-based video game Left Behind:  Eternal Forces. Talk to Action's Jonathan Hutson's ground-breaking series posted at Talk to Action, Political Cortex, and elsewhere, remains the definitive critique of the game. Chip Berlet's series on  Tim LaHaye, the author of the series of novels on which the game is based, explains the games' underlying ideology.

CrossWalk America, the Beatitudes Society, Christian Alliance for Progress and The Center for Progressive Christianity will also urge consumers to boycott the video game, which is being released "just in time for the holidays," according to the manufacturer.

Talk to Action co-founders, Bruce Wilson and me, issued a statement at the request of the organizers of the event; posted below.

The countdown to the launch of Left Behind:  Eternal Forces into minds of evangelical youth to prepare them for the coming religious war, is now underway.

While many will no doubt play the new video game, like any other game, others in the game's target market will unwittingly  experience an indoctrination in the idea that the failure to convert the targets of religious prostylitization justifies killing them.

Nevertheless, the game's release is tied to the Christmas shopping season, suggesting that the evangelical Christian commercial marketplace is being harnessed to drive a dangerous form of Christian supremacism: Dangerous to religious minorities, as well as members of incorrect sects. Arguably, it undermine and prepares for aggression against constitutional democracy itself and basic ideas of religious equality under the law.

Originally posted on Talk to Action

Talk to Action's three-part series on the Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game, in which Christian militias wage physical and spiritual warfare using the power of prayer and modern military weaponry to convert New Yorkers and kill those who resist, has set forth some provocative positions and boldly stated views. And for that, a web site on Christian apologetics, called Christian Cadre, has organized a campaign against Talk to Action and its series. In this piece, Talk to Action researches and rebuts criticism from the leader of this campaign, a blogger who uses the handle Layman. But first, let's review how the series has been received elsewhere in the media.

"Sit down, pour yourself a cup of Holy-CRAP-These-People-Are-